Re:TheAshLad - Sandbooks

definition. The reader may be. satisfied and return to the text or pursue
the matter further. needing just two clicks to find the same passage in
an alternative. translation. If the reader is interested in a historical
analysis of. the passage a search for 'biblical history' yields and array
of. relevant academic and religious sites from all perspectives. A.
reader might devote a day to pursuing a single passage a single. line
finding herself farther and farther afield from the original. text and
translation. Indeed she might forget which site she was. reading.
Reading the bible online is an exploration of multiple. sources
commentators and bibliographic tributaries.. Reading any other
presumptively authoritative text online presents a. similar experience.
The US Constitution is available at among other. commentary from
wellknown and lesser authorities. Footnotes provide. short summaries
of legislative history and important court decisions.. A review of the
Second Amendment upon which the entire gun control. debate rests led
this reader to twentyfour different sites each. directly or indirectly
linked offering finely spun phrasebyphrase. analysis. And that was just
the first sentence of this short. amendment. By the time the curious
reader returns to the original. text her head will be cocked back
distrustful possibly exhausted. certainly skeptical if not despairing of
any authoritative. interpretation. Indeed she may come to believe that
there is no. That any such transcendental meaning is a fiction ... is one.
consequence of deconstruction. there is no concept which is. not
embroiled in an openended play of signification shot. through with
traces and fragments of other ideas.... Consider in. our own society
Freedom the Family Democracy Independence. Authority Order and so
on. Sometimes such meanings are seen as. the origin of all the others
the source from which they flow. but this ... is a curious way of
thinking because for this. meaning ever to have been possible other
signs must already have. existed. It is difficult to think of an origin
without wanting. to go back beyond it.. The Web invites even demands
that its users go back forward around. and elsewhere in an associative
search for meaning. Jonathan Culler. in a discussion of Barthes writes
The text is ceaselessly. traversed by codes which are the source of its
meanings.. Structuralists such as Barthes and Deconstructionists like
Derrida. created a revolution in hermeneutics by identifying the codes
that. inhered in every line of prose. Not long ago one had to be a.
graduate student to grasp the concept. No longer. The Web. illuminates
these codes for everyone to see and much more. importantly use.. In
this light the conservatives' fear of moral relativism is. wellfounded.
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